The assorted leaderships of the NHS unions have demonstrated today why we're in the mess we are over NHS pay. As late as Friday afternoon there was little hard information available about this year's pay proposals, yet by Monday morning, UNISON and the RCN had apparently negotiated a proposal not just for this year but for next year and the year after as well.

If the proposals even came close to reaching UNISON's stated policy of an above-inflation pay rise for all NHS staff then this might have been worth the conflict with the other unions [1], the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament [2], but it doesn't. It falls so far short as to be shockingly bad - a below inflation, real terms pay cut for this year, followed by two more below inflation, real terms pay cuts to come.

The NHS Pay Review Body apparently reported to the Government on Friday, and made a recommendation for a 2.75% pay rise this year. It  specifically ruled out making a multi-year recommendation, because none of the evidence submitted to it delt with the question of future years. Talks about future years' terms and conditions between the Government and unions, which had been started after last year's below inflation award and then suspended while the PRB deliberated, were then hastily reconvened over the weekend, it seems, in order to hitch up a second and third year of pay cuts to the PRB's one year recommendation.

Why the indecent haste? From the Government's point of view it makes some sense - next year is possibly an election year, and public sector workers tend to win better pay rises when the government is worried abou our support at the polls. Getting us hemmed in by a multi-year deal makes sense. For the union negotiators, a multi-year pay deal, even one which leaves health workers worse off at the end in real terms, has been seen for some while as possibly the only way to get the Government to give ground on non-pay issues; things like the length of the working week, which should be 35 hours but has shown no sign of reducing since Agenda for Change regularised it at 37.5 for all NHS staff four years ago. Yet the actual benefits of trying to help the Government through the next two years without a public sector pay confrontation are astonishingly small: there's a trade union facilities agreement (which only covers time off for partnership activities, not for defending members or campaigning against cuts or low pay) and some minute tinkering with details of the pay bandings (but only in the later years of the deal). In short, the pay proposals offer margarine tomorrow, but no jam ever.

According to one Amicus/Unite NEC member [3], UNISON and the RCN actually walked out of joint health service union discussions on Friday in order to go into the private negotiations with the Government which produced this deal, which was then paraded in front of the press this morning, with UNISON's Head of Health, Karen Jennings, reportedly saying, "We will be asking our executive to consider recommending this deal to members as a well-balanced package in the forthcoming consultation."

As a member of that executive, I will be consulting members and branches in my region over the next four days, but at the moment I have no intention of recommending the deal - either as "a well-balanced package" or in any other sense. It is a pay cut, and does not measure up to the demands which Karen Jennings herself issued [4] on behalf of our members last November: "This year, we need a substantial, above inflation pay rise just to put health workers back on an even keel," Ms Jennings warned.

So, Karen, what has changed since then? Apart from, you know, you getting selected to be a Labour candidate in the next General Election? I'm getting so fed up of having to argue with people who believe that single fact can account for the cravenness of UNISON's bargaining with the government over NHS pay that I'm almost beginning to believe it myself. Except, of course, that the RCN are also welcoming the 'deal', even though it means a real-terms pay cut for their members, too, something which they said they wouldn't accept either.

But even the unions who have been left out of the negotiations leading to the three year proposals have difficulty remembering what we're here for. The Royal College of Midwives says it will not recommend the three-year deal, in the statement I linked to above. All well and good, but they go on to say that they will accept the 2.75% proposal for this year, because they respect the independent Pay Review Body process. In other words, as long as the pay cut is proposed by someone not directly on the government's payroll they will not fight it. What if the Pay Review Body proposed an actual cut in midwives' pay, would they still allow these stuffed shirts to pontificate on their members' standard of living?

The problem of course is that the negotiators, UNISON, RCN, RCM and all the rest, are cut of from the realities of life on an NHS wage. None of them have to face the prospect of working extra bank shifts in order to pay the mortgage or the gas bill, or telling the kids they can't afford a foreign holiday this year.

UNISON members in local government, who've just been reading about how their union has condemned local government employers [5] for peddling below-inflation pay rises,  must be wondering whether they are really in the same union as us - how can our left hand be insisting that the "going rate" for pay rises should be 4% while the right hand celebrates negotiating a deal worth far less than that for three years on the trot?

Once again, our union leaders seem prepared to snatch feeble surrender from the jaws of making an effort. Having put lots of time and money (well, OK, leaflets) into the "Pay Matters" campaign, UNISON negotiators are about to try to persuade us that it doesn't, at least not as much as a facilities agreement and a promise of talks about 'productivity' to reduce the working week.

Could this be a collapse too far by the UNISON bureaucracy?  

UNISON's Health Conference meets in Manchester on Monday, immediately after the meeting of the Service Group Executive. No doubt many attending the conference will want to know why their union appears to be trying so hard to sell them this dressed-up pay cut. I hope that the proximity to all those angry delegates will help SGE members to reflect on the policy of our union, and repair the damage done to our relationship with fellow NHS trade unions over the past four days by renouncing the 'deal' done in our name and committing UNISON to fight, alongside all the other NHS trade unions who will do so, for a wage rise above the rate of inflation for all NHS workers. Nothing else can be acceptable to our members.

The twin threats of an imminent conference and an ongoing election for SGE seats provide opportunities for rank and file UNISON members to hold us SGE members to account. Perhaps this will be enough to persuade a majority of the SGE to do the right thing on Sunday, and tell the negotiators that the deal is simply not good enough to be recommended. I hope so.